How can I keep my laptop fast?

Question

My laptop is about 6 months old and has showd the first signs of slowing. I know some basic things to keep it moving at brand-new speed, but I have done all that I know, and it's still not quite wher it used to be. Here's what I have done so far:

Anti-Virus: I have gotten MS security essentials, ran a full scan on the C drive, and it showed nothing(that was the most recent scan. I have found some visuses in the past which were removed.)
Defraging: I think I am currently at 1-2 % fragmented. I have run a full defrag before at about 16 % fragmented.
Startup programs: I have no startup programs right now. I removed all the smaller startup processes I could find that were clearly ot necissary.
Prefetch folder: I have seen where emptying this helps on XP, but i read that it was improved and did not need to be emptied in win7. can anyone confirm?
Deleting stuff: I have cleaned up some stuff, but i am ony using about 130 of 200 GB. My HDD is 250 GB, but the other 50 is dedicated to a Linux partition for dual-booting, which only a very small part of is actualy used by linux. I do need some advice though on deleting whole programs, because I have heard that win7 leaves peices behind when it uninstalls prgrams.
Registry: i have not gotten into this yet. so many programs to clean it. need some staring advice on backing it up/restoring it/cleaning it.

is there anything else I can do? btw i am running 64 bit win7. thanks!

Answer 1

I know this is off topic, but sense I switched entirely to linux, I kind of miss de-fraging my hard drive once a month.



One place I'd check is startup programs and disable anything you don' use over 20% of the time right after you boot up. A lot of programs will try to pre-load to make them appear faster, but in reality it slows everything else down.

Answer 2

Tune-Up and Clean-Up

First Ccleaner http://www.ccleaner.com

Then Malwarebytes http://malwarebytes.org

<><><><><>

Run Error Checking

Right click on C: in My Computer

Properties

Tools

Check box for Error Checking

Reboot

<><><><><>

Run Disk Cleanup

Right click on C: in My Computer

Properties

Disk Cleanup button



After it Calculates how much space you can recover,

Click on the More Options Tab then

System Restore Cleanup Button (this can recover a lot of space)

<><><><><>

Control Panel

Add/Remove Programs

Look at Programs you no longer use and uninstall them

(Don't if not sure - windows will say you have not used it in a while but it may be an important program)



<><><><><>

Right click on C: in My Computer

Properties

Tools

Disk Defragment







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Vista and 7 use Superfetch

Superfetch watches what programs you are using and loads the most frequently used ones into RAM

This does increase Productivity when you are using different programs at the same time.



For System Speed it may be better to turn it off. Like for Gaming or Video Rendering - you will have more memory to use and the System will not be refreshing loaded memory every 60 milliseconds that you aren't using.



On a laptop running on battery Superfetch is bad for battery life, because memory needs to be refreshed.

Superfetch is great for increasing Productivity in Office type work where you use many applications all day.

Home PC users don't really need it.

Answer 3

1: Add more RAM



2: Clean out PC vendor installed bloatware. Doing a system restore point in between.



3: Your hard drive is actually 180 GB out of 250GB filled which puts it at about 72%, try to reduce it lower, closer to 50% filled. (50GB of Linux counts as a space. Linux Mint I hope?)



4: Ccleaner for your Registry cleaning. Do save the previous state and do a system restore point. You might have to revert and then go one by one until you hit the problem Registry item that you can't fix.



5: Turn Windows 7 eye candy down in performance settings. For instance, do you really need a shadow under the mouse pointer? Do you really need to see the contents of the window as your dragging or will a outline do enough? Do you really need translucent garbage? Reduce all you can and it will make a dramatic speed increase.



6: Your wise about Linux, install the clamd or use the Software center, update the definitions and run a scan on your Windows partition. You might have to mount the NTSF drive using NTFS-3g first.



7: Lastly, perhaps the malware you had on Win 7 has corrupted system file that they don't work right anymore. This means a factory restore. Save your files first.

Answer 4

You are 5-star till 4th step, 4th step onwards :-

Its perfect you have cleaned up startup items, now you can speed up your system by cleaning unwanted icons on Desktop and minimizing programs pinned-up on Taskbar and clearing additional notifications on taskbar.

For registry you can clean unused and orphan-keys by suitable Registry-cleaner freewares.

e.g. REGISTRY CLEANER, REGISTRY BOOSTER ,CC-CLEANER and REGISTRY MAINTAINER etc.

Answer 5

try downloading tune up utilities it does everything that speed's up the pc. it did help me to speed it up.

Answer 6

you can put some extra ram.!